Head Denies Teachers Told to Face the Music or Dance to Donald’s Tune

Things cannot get much worse for chief executive Sir Donald Tsang, whose Toad of Toad Hall antics threaten to hammer the final nail into Hong Kong Disneyland's coffin by rebranding Mickey Mouse as a statesman of substance and stature.

On the same day that his hapless performance in a televised "debate" against Hong Kong's very own Gandhi, barrister-turned-agitator Audrey Eu Yuet Mee, saw his stock fall even lower with locals, who have watched enough TV soaps to recognise a bad actor when they see one, his Orwellian "reform" package was dealt another blow when a secondary school head teacher in the pollution capital of Hong Kong denied having told a staff meeting on 9 June that no excuses would be accepted for teachers who failed to attend today's pro-Government rally.

Well, that isn't exactly true, as Dr. Jenny Chung Sin-ling (that’s "Sin-ling", not "Sin-ning", although the pronunciation is much the same in Cantonese) has declined to return journalists' calls.

Dr. Chung, who has been principal of Federation of Education Workers Wong Cho Bau Secondary School in Tung Chung since its foundation in 2003, allegedly told her teachers that attendance at the aptly named "Act Now" march was required as part of their professional development and that she would accept no excuses for absence without prior approval. She failed to mention, so it would seem, whether her staff would receive the HK$200 marching fee that is on offer from other pro-Government groups, which have also, according to the Chinese press, been offering seafood lunches for a cut-price HK$30 and asking participants to bring their domestic helpers along to boost numbers.

The school's sponsors, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers (HKFEW), is the territory's second largest teachers’ union, set up in 1975, two years after its rival the pro-democracy Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, with whom it is commonly at loggerheads. The HKFEW's president, Yeung Yiu-chung, BBS, JP, as well as ticking the pro-China boxes by being a Hong Kong Deputy to the PRC's National People's Congress and a member of the DAB, is also supervisor of HKFEW Wong Cho Bau Secondary School.

I don't know whether he was the brains behind the school's motto "Be pragmatic and innovative" or whether it was he who came up with a mission statement that refers to a campus built "with harmony and respect through the fostering of a culture of love", but, presumably, together with his principal, he has been the driving force behind the patriotic education which the school’s website proudly vaunts as part of its curriculum. (The website is only available in Chinese and, oddly, the link to the school's staff list is no longer working.)

Of course, I may be downplaying the influence of the "sponsoring body manager" on the school’s Incorporated Management Committee, Leung Siu-tong, who also happens to be principal of the HKFEW Wong Cho Bau Primary School and number two to Yeung as vice president of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers.

Leung, who cut his teeth as a Basic Law Consultative Committee member in the mid-1980s, further bolstered his credentials as a friend of Beijing by being one of the 800 Election Committee members who in 2000 cast a vote among themselves for six of the 60 seats in the Legislative Council. Through this convoluted and quintessentially anti-democratic process, he shared the responsibility for bringing the likes of Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, David Chu Yu-lin and – you’ve guessed it – Yeung Yiu-chung to the legislative table.

Which brings us back to Sir Donald, for it was he who, just two and a half years ago, rubberstamped Leung's appointment as a District Council member, making him one of the lucky 129 out of 534 that don't need to bother with pesky things like elections.

Just another day in Hong Kong, really ...